21st Annual Condé Nast Traveler Environmental Award Winner

This year's Environmental Award winner is a scientist fighting to preserve Indonesia's tropical forests and to bring the country's orangutans back from the brink. He may also have discovered an important source of renewable energy.

In the face of it, North Sulawesi would seem an improbable location for an environmental revolution. The cluster of Indonesian islands on the edge of the Sulawesi Sea are home to stunning beaches and coral reefs, inspiring the local tourism authority to promote it as a place for "Adventures Beyond Dreams," specifically spectacular scuba diving. But the story of Willie Smits reveals that hidden behind the undeniable natural attractions of the coastal resorts lies a remarkable source of renewable energy.

It began in 1989 when Smits, a Dutch-born scientist working for Indonesia's forestry ministry, found a baby orangutan tossed on a trash heap in Borneo's province of East Kalimantan. After nursing Uce, as he named her, back to health, Smits began taking in other orangutans that were sick or were pets that had been abandoned and in 1991 founded what would eventually become the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS). "Willie drew a lot of attention to the plight of orangutans," says Gabriella Fredriksson, a conservation biologist who researched the adaptation process of the first 80 orangutans that BOS released into the wild between 1992 and 1997. Their plight is dire: Baby orangutans are prized as pets in Indonesia and are also smuggled to private zoos in neighboring countries and the Middle East. The Indonesian government estimates that nearly 100,000 orangutans have been killed or sold into captivity since 1970, and that only some 50,000 wild orangutans remain on Borneo and fewer than 7,000 in Sumatra.

Since 1991, BOS has saved 1,500 orangutans, relocating them to animal rescue centers around the country. Taking on the illegal wildlife trade has earned Smits hundreds of death threats from shady operators of animal smuggling networks, illegal loggers who decimate orangutan habitat, and rogue members of the local security forces. In 1997, he and his wife and three sons fled Balikpapan, in East Kalimantan, after interfering with what he says was the military's involvement in the wildlife trade and illegal logging. And in 2003, he was forced to leave Jakarta after angering animal traders in East Java. "They know they will have to kill me to get rid of me," Smits says defiantly. "I am an Indonesian."

Smits first came to Indonesia in 1980 to complete a master's degree in tropical forestry that he was pursuing in the Netherlands. In 1985 Indonesia's forestry ministry invited him back to help solve the problem the country was having with fungi attacking hardwood trees. His rescue of Uce began a life-changing mission that now extends beyond the orangutan to the primate's habitat and the industries that devour it.

Deforestation and the illegal animal trade continue to decimate the dwindling population. After a recent trip deep into the jungles of West Kalimantan, Smits rescued another baby orangutan that was being sold for 800,000 rupiah, or $90. "That's three months of income for these people," he explains, citing poverty as one of many reasons the trade is so hard to stop.

Smits, now 53 and an Indonesian national, has planted close to a million trees in North Sulawesi and has earned the admiration of many in the city of Tomohon, his adopted home. From here, he runs several local ventures, including a palm sugar business, a factory that makes furniture from waste wood, and a technical university. His new challenge is to alert the world to the cost of its insatiable thirst for palm oil, which is used in everything from beauty products to biofuels. According to the Worldwatch Institute, Indonesia is the planet's largest supplier, with plantations subsuming some 800,000 acres of forest annually. As for the future of the fewer than 300 million acres of tropical forests remaining in Indonesia, Smits is pessimistic. "We are witnessing the extinction of a vast part of the biodiversity in Southeast Asia," he adds.

A key to stopping this destruction, Smits says, is the arenga sugar palm, and he is on a messianic mission to spread the word about its virtues. "Palm sugar produces three times more sugar than sugarcane," he says, noting its advantage over the sugarcane Brazil is using in its successful ethanol program. "It also has a lower glycemic index than regular sugar." Yet the greatest promise of the sugar palm lies in what Smits says is its vast superiority over the oil palm, which depletes the soil and then fails to thrive. In benign contrast, the sugar palm grows only in mixed, secondary forests, allowing other species of plants and vegetables to exist and flourish. And after the first two or three years, it requires no pesticides or fertilizerunlike the oil palm. The sugar palm can grow on the side of a mountain, be harvested daily, and, Smits adds, provide 20 times more jobs than oil palm or sugarcane for tappers and farmers. "By 2030, we could replace all of the world's oil with ethanol from sugar palm," he claims, adding that it is the only form of renewable energy that can be produced on a large scale and is ready to go today.

Smits's sugar palm factory, run by his Masarang Foundation, is a spotless, well-run operation where "zero waste" is the objective. Every stem and branch is used to produce palm sugar for export, ethanol to help run the plant, a soy-like sauce, vinegar, palm juice, and even rum.

Because sugar palms are also fire resistant, Smits planted thousands of them around his animal rescue center and ecolodge on Borneo, Samboja Lestari ("Samboja Forever"), to protect the orangutans in the event fire ravages the area. Samboja Lestari is set on a 5,000-acre plot that BOS reforested, about 25 miles from the port city of Balikpapan. Today it is home to a lush rain forest with almost 700 butterfly and insect species, 578 plant species, and 1,232 tree species (enough to serve as habitat for up to 1,000 orangutans). The ecolodge has 26 simply furnished but air-conditioned rooms and accommodates guests as well as volunteers, who pay to work in the rehabilitation center (packages from Southeast Asia Tours start at $425 per person based on double occupancy for a two-night stay, including transfers, meals, and guided treks; 805-484-9393).

You might think Smits's success in re-greening thousands of acres on Borneo and large swaths of North Sulawesi would earn him the respect of local politicians. Instead, his efforts to protect the environment and improve life for thousands of local farmers have frequently been stymied by corrupt bureaucrats and businesses with powerful backing. Smits is committed to persuading people to think not about short-term gain but about ways to sustain natural resources for the future. His fearless attitude may unnerve his family, but they have grown to accept his bravery and are unified in the struggle. "Willie has so many ideas. He just needs the backing of those with political power," says his wife, Syennie Watoelangkow, a member of the Minahasa people, who dominate the region.

Syennie should know. Her battle against corruption in her hometown of Tomohon included running for mayor this summer. She was considered the favorite yet lost by less than two percent of the votea result that both she and her husband attribute to fraudulent ballots and widespread cheating. "We don't do bribes, so we are dangerous," says Smits. "We are popular and not controllable."

Turning ideas into reality is difficult anywhere, and especially so in Indonesia, where the culture of corruption is so deeply ingrained that almost every institution has been tainted and it's common for officials to be put behind bars. Three decades here have taken a toll on Smits, leaving him cynical about many thingsbut not about the virtues and the promise of the arenga sugar palm. "There is nothing else like it," he says. "We can solve the world's energy problems with this simple tree."

It's a steep climb through knee-deep mud and thickets of wiry branches to Mount Masarang, in a remote corner of North Sulawesi, but Smits scales the incline with the preternatural ability of a mountain goat. After about 90 minutes, we arrive at the peak to find a lone white cow grazing in a vast grassy knoll. Someday Smits hopes to turn this spot into a self-sustaining community that will attract intellectuals, artists, and environmentalists from around the globe. The idea is that together they will tackle big questions like how to solve the world's energy needs and what it will take to prevent further destruction of the rain forests so critical to the planet's health. In the meantime, there are other, persistent battles to be won and minds to be changed. For information on making a donation or volunteering, visit redapes.org.